Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

“ You sound like Captain Ahab after the white whale, or Captain Kaseem after this Rosnich person.”

“ I just have to be certain. There're just too many loose ends, and the way that suicide was… I don't know… staged, like a setup. I can't bear the thought of this creep's getting away and sitting back and having a good laugh at our expense.” He almost spilled his drink when he said, “Christ, Jess! Nobody's gotten away with shit. Lowenthal is our man.”

“ Nobody's dug enough around Lowenthal. We don't know enough about the man, or his friends and coworkers.”

“ Brewer's building that evidence now. He's talking to everyone who knew him at Balue-Stork, former employers, high school teachers, you name it. By the time he's through-”

“ Brewer's idea of investigating this is to nail the dead guy.”

He calmed when he saw that she was getting angry. “All right… okay… how long'll you need?”

“ Two days tops and maybe I can satisfy myself that Lowenthal and the Wekosha vampire are one and the same man.”

Otto pulled at his face as if checking to see if he needed a shave. Then he said, “I'm going to miss you.”

She breathed deeply and reached across, taking his hand in hers, squeezing. “When I get back, we'll have lots of time, Otto.”

He gave her a reassuring smile. “Maybe more than you know.”

Her eyes pinned his. “What're you saying?”

“ I've been politely asked to retire. Nearing the age anyway, and Leamy-”

“ For Christ's sake, Otto! It was your work that led to Chicago and to Lowenthal.”

“ No, not really. It was your work, and Leamy wants more 'fresh blood' in the department.”

“ Hell, Leamy's only a few years younger than you himself.”

“ Well, dear, it goes a lot deeper than age alone. That's just the P.R. phrase for losing politically.”

“ Who're they… who is Leamy replacing you with?”

“ O'Rourke.”

“ O'Rourke? That back-stabbing bitch!”Whoa, hold on there. I suggested O'Rourke. She's good and-”

“ She's been working behind your back, with Raynack, and-”

“ I've known about that for a long time.”

“ And you did nothing about it?”

“ She's good.”

“ Is that all you can say?”

“ She's got the instincts of a barracuda, and that's what it takes in the department. As for me, I think I've missed out on enough living. I think I'll take the long vacation.”

“ That's crazy, Otto. You're the best in the FBI. We all know that. This just can't be true.”

“ I've weighed it all over and again, and I thank God I'm alive and that a woman like you could be interested in what I've become. But, kid, I'll understand it if you now decide that it's over between us.”

“ What? Dammit, Boutine, you can be insufferable.”

“ What did I say?”

She stood up, about to leave, but he stopped her. “I don't want to lose you, Jess, but-”

“ But you think I've been chasing you because of what you are instead of who you are, that I'm no better than O'Rourke? I don't need that kind of judgment call at a time like this. Otto. Now, please, let me by.”

He stood aside, staring after her, shaken by the sudden turn in their relationship. He had made a terribly wrong assumption about her. Just because O'Rourke was sleeping with Leamy…

He was interrupted by a waiter with a telephone, saying, “You are Inspector Boutine?”

“ Yes.”

“ Telephone, sir.”

The waiter hooked up the phone at the table and after a series of clicks, Joe Brewer came on. “Otto, you may want to cancel your flight back.”

“ What's that?” Something's come up. May be nothing, but who can tell? I'd like to hit you with it, see what you think.”

“ This to do with Lowenthal?”

“ Yeah.”

“ You saying that maybe Jess is right about him?”

“ Could be. Any rate, he may just be half of a duo.”

“ A team? He had help?”

“ Maybe, Otto-it's a strict maybe.”

“ Comes from where?”

“ Something in the apartment. Some things said by co-workers.”

“ At Balue-Stork?”

“ Right.”

“ Anything concrete, or is this just backscatter?”

“ He used a typewriter most of the time, but the few scraps we've found in his hand don't match the handwriting at all.”

“ It was printed, remember?”

“ He didn't habitually print, but when he did, it was not the same.”

“ Anything else?”

“ Some co-workers claimed he said he would one day stick it to Balue-Stork; that he was going into business with a partner to patent a new product. Sound familiar?”

“ So he was talking about himself, a second personality. The guy was a split-brain! You've seen the type-signing with his other self, this Teach character.”

“ But he went so far as to talk to a lawyer about drawing up papers between himself and his partner, to keep his partner from exploding, he told the lawyer.”

“ You got the lawyer with you?”

“ Can you come over?”

“ Will do.”

For the first time. Otto considered the fact that perhaps the wizardry of Dr. Jessica Coran had once again been right-or at least half right.

# # #

Boutine canceled his flight from Brewer's office. The jagged pieces of the puzzle had been forced to make a fit, and he had been happy with the notion that his last case would be closed with his boxing up his personal items back at Quantico, and he could leave with his head up. But the truth was, they'd dropped some of the puzzle pieces, allowing them to hide about their feet.

Everyone, that was, except Jess.

And she had touched off something in Brewer, sending him off on his own to scrounge up new, additional information, such as the fact Lowenthal's lawyer had gotten a sudden phone call only hours before his death, asking if he could arrange for papers to be drawn up between himself and a partner he had which declared them equal partners in a venture that involved some sort of medical invention that he was having patented.

“ The idea,” explained Jeff Eastfal, Lowenthal's lawyer, “belonged, Maurice said, to this second party; the other individual had come to Maurice with the idea. Maurice, while still under Balue-Stork's roof, began toying with the idea at night in his home lab, he said, evenings, weekends, refining it.”

“ Did he tell you the name of this partner?” asked Boutine.

“ No.”

“ Did he say anything to you to indicate who this man was?”

“ Nothing.”

Boutine bellowed, “Christ.”

“ Except that they had once worked together.”

“ Worked together? At Balue-Stork?”

“ He didn't say.”

“ What did he say?”

Eastfal put up a hand, gesturing for the FBI man to calm down, refusing to go on if he did not. Brewer muttered a few whispered words into Boutine's ear. Boutine settled into a chair.

Eastfal continued at Brewer's nod. “I got the general impression it was Balue-Stork, but honestly, he did not say. And while we're on the subject of honesty, Maurice was, so far as I knew him, an honest man, and I can't believe for a moment that he had anything whatever to do with-with murdering for blood.”

“ He designed the bloody murder weapon!” shouted Boutine.

“ I am aware of that, but it's my considered opinion, sir, that he did not know to what uses his-his so-called partner was putting it.”

Outside the lawyer's prestigious downtown offices where the halls were marbled wall and floor, with mahogany finishings and stairwells, the two FBI men stood wondering what Eastfal's story meant.

“ We've got to go back to Balue-Stork, Otto,” Brewer told him. “Look at this.”

Brewer showed him a letter addressed to Eastfal from Maurice Lowenthal. Otto had to agree, the handwriting was light-years away from the blood letters that'd been written by Teach.